


Acceptable Losses

by glacis



Category: Eureka
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan's willing to take one for the team, but Jack thinks he'd be an unacceptable loss, and does what he's trained to do: protect the civilians.  In the aftermath, Nathan's definition of acceptable loss changes, and so does everything else.  Spoilers for episode 304 I Do Over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acceptable Losses

Acceptable Losses by glacis.  (Eureka, Jack/Nathan, R).  Nathan’s willing to take one for the team, but Jack thinks he’d be an unacceptable loss, and does what he’s trained to do: protect the civilians.  In the aftermath, Nathan’s definition of acceptable loss changes, and so does everything else.  Spoilers for episode 304 I Do Over.  Originally written for the [Small Fandom Fest](http://community.livejournal.com/smallfandomfest/) 06, Jan. 2010.

~~

The first time Sheriff Jack Carter realized he was stuck in Groundhog Day it was frustrating.  The next few times were amusing, really irritating, tragic, painful, scary, and might even have turned catastrophic.

Instead, it just became the most surreal experience in his life.

Given his life since moving to Eureka, that was saying something.

~~

First the shower was cold, then he cut himself shaving, then spilled breakfast on his last clean uniform, then all the women in his life conspired to make him feel like an idiot.  None of these things were really all that unusual, but given that Allison was marrying Stark later on that day, it all stung a little more than usual.

Still, he bucked up, did his duty, went to work.  Only to find Thorne telling Allison she had to lay off a dozen people, on a Saturday, before her wedding.  If it hadn’t been for the two years he’d already spent having it pounded into his head that Eureka in general and Global Dynamics in particular were just weird, that would have done it.  Of course, then Allison turned around and gave him the list, a whole other layer of weirdness, since it was her job to lay them off and his to go with her in case there was trouble, not do it for her.

One look at her eyes made him take the list.  She looked calm on the surface, but she was also about one stressor away from implosion.  He examined that thought for a moment and felt proud that he’d actually been listening to Zoe talk about her homework, and some of it stuck.

Then he went off to fire people.

After getting past the strangeness of having a whole person just to sweep up poop, then getting flash-blinded by a funky light in the basement, he decided he’d had enough for one morning, and went home.

Only to be subjected to his brain-grating sister, three days early… and her cats.  Zoe, of course, was in Heaven.

Jack was pretty sure he’d landed in Hell when his back was turned.

Heading off to his funeral… er, Allison’s wedding to the Other Guy… Jack yanked Stark’s chain about the necklace he was holding as Allison’s wedding gift, just to see him glower, then went into the tent and once again blew his chance to ask Allison to dump the scientist and run off with the sheriff, then he walked his girl up the aisle to give to his rival.

Then the sky broke open and he was back in the shower, naked, freezing, and out of soap.

Okay.  So.  Time loop.  He spent the next ten hours trying to get anyone to believe him, getting yelled at by women, smirked at by Stark, and discovering a possible cause of the latest bizarreness in his universe.  A clock.  Made sense, really, since it was a time screw-up, that it would be a big old atomic clock.

Since nobody was listening to him anyway, he went off to the wedding (again) only this time instead of blowing his chance to ask Allison to elope, he kissed her.

He knew better than take stupid advice from his sister.

Sure, Allison let him down easy, but still.  Having the truth rubbed in his face after his very best attempt at a ‘leave him for me’ smooch was a bummer.  He walked her down the aisle (again) and the sky broke open in a flash of blue light (again) and he ended up in the shower (again).

The third time around, Jack was totally in control.  He skipped the shaving, the breakfast, the arrival of his sister, and headed out to work.  There, he argued with Stark, in much more detail, about the big funky atomic clock that would set the standard for timekeepers the world over, pissing off the Swiss and, as far as Jack could figure, sticking him in a time loop.

Even if Stark did think a time loop would destroy the world, so Jack couldn’t possibly be in one.

Since Stark wouldn’t shut the damned clock off, end the loop, and save the world, Jack went off to ask Thorne to do it.  She told him to talk to Allison, who thought he was just wibbling about the wedding, so Jack took matters in his own hands.  He went back to GD, pulled a gun on Fargo, and made him unplug the clock.  After that, they both took off to the wedding, Jack secure in the knowledge that he’d once more saved the world.

Except he hadn’t.  The flash interrupted the wedding, again, only this time when he landed in the shower, he was still in his uniform, and both cuts from shaving he hadn’t done in this loop were on his face, leaving a gash bleeding down his cheek.

Seriously freaked out now, as if he hadn’t been before, Jack booked it to GD and confronted Stark, who obviously thought he was unhinged, but who at least gave him the name of the Time Guy (of course Global had a Time Guy.  They had a Poop Guy, and Time was much more important than Poop.  Or at least Jack thought so).  Leo Weinbrenner, the Time Guy, said he didn’t do anything but oil gears, plus he was on Jack’s list to fire, so Jack went off to Henry, because Henry could fix anything.

Still bleeding.

Not that anyone seemed to notice.  Jack sighed and kept on trying to save the world.

He didn’t find Henry, but he did find his sister and his daughter, both of whom ignored the bleeding to bitch him out.  He really didn’t need that when he had the whole world-saving thing on his plate, but he did love them, so he tried to reassure them a little.  They didn’t seem too impressed.  Maybe because Lexi was too wrapped up in her pregnancy.

My God, Jack thought, she’s breeding.  The crazy is multiplying.  Still, he didn’t want reality to unravel before he got to meet the newest Carter, so he gave up on Henry and went to find Thorne.  If it wasn’t the clock, it was probably the bitch.

Evil Eva was off on some insane side project of her own, probably to take over the world, when Jack caught up with her.  She was doing weird things with holograms, so Jack grabbed her remote before she could do any more harm.  Then the blue flash ripped the sky open, and Jack automatically jumped on her to protect her, and when he opened his eyes again, he was in the shower.

It was bad.  Not the cold water, but the pain.  He still held Thorne’s remote, and he was still in his uniform, but it felt like somebody’d beaten him with a baseball bat.  The way his ribs shifted, at least one was broken, but his skin wasn’t heating up like it would with a lot of internal bleeding, so he didn’t let it stop him.

He’d worked through worse.

Jack went straight to Henry, who at least looked concerned about his condition before getting sidetracked by the remote.  It wasn’t the time loop doohickey, instead it was a super-duper Geiger counter for empty spaces underground.  Jack shook his head and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now, when Henry mentioned Leo Weinbrenner being at NASA with him.

“Oiled the gears, my ass,” Jack muttered as he headed back to Global once again.

This time he caught Leo, and discovered he wasn’t the only one stuck in the loop.  The blue light that hit him the first time around was Leo’s invention, ultra-indigo something or other, that slowed protons down, or something Jack didn’t quite catch.

Armed with new information, Jack tried to convince Stark (yet again) who (once again) thought he had gone fruit loops, not been stuck in a time loop.  Back to Leo, desperate to find a way to get Stark onboard, Jack was forced to memorize a long twisty equation… and, proving he was desperate, did it the only way he could, which was to regress back to first grade and sing the damned thing.  Then Leo gave him the bad news that the world could only survive one or two more loops, before he stepped into the light chamber to make right what he had made go wrong.  Jack held his breath.

Blue light flashed.

He was back in the goddamned shower.

Okay, this was ridiculous, and scary, and he had a really bad feeling about it.  Holding his various shifting internal injuries in place, Jack hobbled to Global, only to find that Leo not only hadn’t fixed the time loop, he’d turned himself into charcoal.  Swallowing back the urge to barf back the breakfast he hadn’t eaten, Jack looked for Stark.

Stark, in turn, looked at Jack like he was a lunatic as Jack sang the stupid equation as fast as he could.  Given that it was a formula to break the light speed barrier, and there was no way in hell Jack could have known it much less set it to music on his own, Stark was forced to admit something hinky was going on.  Jack gave him a situational brief, Stark decided this was the last safe loop they could have before the world ended, and that it was up to him to save everyone.

Jack left him to it, went off to make peace with his sister, tell his daughter he loved her, and wish Allison the very best, just in case Stark didn’t manage to save the world, and reality as they knew it ceased to exist.  He also took a moment to wonder why on earth he was involved in shit this big, when he could be enjoying a normal life tracking down dangerous criminals and bailing his daughter out of jail, before shrugging and heading back to Global to see what he could do to help, if anything.

By the time he got there, Stark and Fargo had jury-rigged the proton acceleration chamber Leo died in up to the new atomic clock.  If the pressure seal stayed, they’d be okay… so, of course, two minutes before the end of the world, the seal broke.  Fargo volunteered to manually synch the timer, then Stark said he’d do it since it was his responsibility.  While they were arguing, Jack made a decision.

There was no way Stark would let Fargo possibly die in that chamber.  In the big picture, Stark was a lot more valuable to GD, and Eureka, and Allison, than Jack was.  Lexi would take care of Zoe, and Zoe would take care of Lexi, and Henry would take care of them both.  He would miss them like hell, and they would miss him, but he’d been a cop for twenty years, and they knew the risks of the job.

One of the major ones being, of course, that sometimes a cop would have to sacrifice himself to save those he had sworn to protect.  Someone else could do his job.  He wasn’t sure he could say the same for Stark.

Plus, Allison was waiting.  And so was the baby she was carrying, by Stark.

Besides, let’s face it, if Jack took some weird quantum leap Stark might be able to save him.  If Stark took it, he was toast.  There was no way Fargo would ever figure it out.

Jack took a deep breath.

“Nathan!” he called out.

Stark turned to him, eyebrow arching, just as Jack stepped into the chamber.

“Catch,” Jack called, as he tossed the necklace he’d been holding for the wedding toward Stark’s face.  Stark automatically reached up to catch it, as Jack watched the last tenths of a second tick off, then pressed the button when it reached 6:00:00.

No blue light flashed.

But things started moving really fast around him.

It was disorienting, watching Fargo then Stark then a whole bunch of other people flashing around like chipmunks on speed, or a DVD on fast forward scan, so Jack closed his eyes to keep the vertigo down.  Vertigo combined with possible broken ribs and internal bruising and probably a concussion was a really bad thing, and he didn’t know what would happen if he tossed his cookies while stuck in ultra-slow-motion.  And he didn’t want to find out.

Squinting through one eye, he saw Stark, staring up at him for a long moment like a kid looking at a puppy through the window of a pet store, and Jack wondered what the hell he was doing.  Wasn’t he supposed to be at his own wedding?  Then there were more flashes, and Jack thought he caught sight of Lexi’s blonde hair, and Zoe’s face, looking angry and sad and maybe wet with tears.  There was Allison, only she was skinny, and was that a baby?  And more… Henry, distraught, and Fargo, sitting in a corner with his face in his hands, and always, always, Stark.

Nathan.

Searching.

Fighting.

For something.

For Jack?

~~

“Catch!”

Nathan had only a moment to wonder what the hell Carter was playing at before he disappeared into the chamber.

Damn Fargo for slowing him down.  Getting in his way.  Interfering before he could get to the chamber.  Before Carter.

Fargo was busy dancing because time marched on, but Nathan was caught, staring at Jack, fingers crushing the jewelry box in his fist, as Jack’s solemn face slowly disintegrated and blew away in an unfelt wind.

“Oh, god,” Fargo whimpered behind him.

What was he going to tell Allison?

Or, sweet Lord, young Zoe?

He’d informed families, in the past, when a scientist was killed in the course of pursuing the truth.  It was a difficult part of his job, but one he took seriously.  But this, this was different.  This should have been him in that chamber, because he, not Carter, was the scientist, and it should have been he who paid the price.

Not the sheriff.

Normally, in a crisis, his brain would kick in, and he would immediately begin work to solve the problem.

But this crisis was anything but normal.

This was Jack.

Jack, who’d become something of a friend lately, who’d been surprisingly gracious in accepting Alli’s choice, who’d always done everything he could, no matter the risk, to protect Eureka and everyone who lived there.

Who had died to protect them.  To save the world, quite literally.  Who had taken Nathan’s place.

This was unacceptable.

Footsteps behind him told him Fargo had left.  Probably to go to the wedding.

The wedding.

He couldn’t go to the wedding.  He had a sheriff to save.

But Allison was waiting for him.

Instincts honed over a lifetime came to the fore and, as always happened, the scientist won out over the man.

The wedding would have to wait.  There was no telling how long Carter had, stuck in the proton matrix within the accelerator chamber, before his form lost all cohesion and it would be impossible to retrieve him.  It might already be impossible, but Nathan had won out over impossible odds before, and he would this time, as well.

Jack Carter was not going to die on his watch, nor in his place.

~~

Allison Blake stared at her reflection in the mirror, barely hearing Jo’s choked voice behind her, nor Henry’s as he announced the postponement of the wedding to the guests.  In the hubbub, she heard a sharp “No!” screamed in a voice she recognized.

Someone had told Zoe her father would not be coming home.  Ever again.

She knew she should move, should get out of the fancy dress and back in her suit, should go to GD and find out everything she could, should help fix this if it could be fixed, should hug Zoe and cry with her and make sure Nathan was all right.

Instead, she vomited all over her shoes, then curled up in a ball on the ground and closed her eyes.

Some time later, warm hands closed over her shoulders, and soft words fell on her ears, even if they made no sense.  Someone cleaned her up, and someone else wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and it hit her, hard, that she loved Jack Carter more than she’d realized.  But among the hands and the voices, she didn’t hear the one that might make things okay again.

Where was Nathan?

Eventually she came back to herself.  She dressed, saw to her son and made sure Kevin was taken home with the sitter, hugged Zoe, met someone called Lex who said she was Jack’s sister, had Jo drive her back to GD, and found Nathan.

Fargo was crying outside the room.  Nathan hadn’t been kind to him, but then, Nathan seldom was kind to anyone but children, some breeds of animal, and Allison.

“Why didn’t you come?” she asked quietly, staring at Nathan’s back, one hand cradling the life developing below her ribs.

“He’s in there, Alli.  There must be a way to get him back out.”

For a brief moment she felt hope, blazing through her, as she walked up to his side.  Then she glanced up into his face.

She knew that look.  He didn’t truly believe what he was saying, but he was trying to convince himself.  It was a look she’d seen before.  It was the one that had torn apart their first attempt at marriage.

Obsession.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her stomach.  He didn’t even look at her.  A tear slid from the corner of her eye as she realized, long before he did, just as it had been in the past, their second chance had died in this chamber that day.  She loved Nathan well enough to know that this puzzle, this possibly impossible quest, would eat up his attention completely.  She loved Jack enough for a small part of her mind to be thankful that someone was willing to tilt at windmills to get him back, but the pragmatic part of her, the largest part of her, knew she would once again be a single mother, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

Staring up at Nathan, eyes tracing the scowling expression and the intent glare, she sighed.

Things worked out the way they were meant to.

Didn’t mean she had to like it.

But it did mean she wouldn’t fight it.

Wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

~~

Life continued.  Thorne nearly shut Global down and almost killed a bunch of teenagers trying to cover up her past.  A robot sheriff came in to replace Carter, as if anything could, and was fried when a high school science project created a second sun, leaving Jo the job she’d always coveted but never wanted, not at the cost of her friend Carter.   Allison’s friend Tess became the new head of GD and nearly sent them into another ice age; once past that minor glitch, she settled in to the job like she’d been born for it. She knew about Nathan’s project, but no one got in the way of Stark on a mission, so she signed off on the budget and left him to it.




Zoe moved away from Eureka, with her aunt and her aunt’s new husband.  She kept in touch with Henry, and her boyfriend Lucas, but her father’s death had made her hate the place, and she refused to come back, for all the benefits it could offer her education.  Eventually she enrolled at MIT and studied robotics, played with her nephews and nieces on break, and cursed the day she ever heard of Eureka.  It would be many years before she returned, in the wake of a miracle.

Henry nearly got his lover back, but gave her up again for the greater good, and her own.  The object lesson from losing Jack ate at his conscience, moderating his actions.  In the wake of near disaster and yet more personal loss, he returned to his work, subtly doing everything he could to help Nathan, to take his mind off his own heartbreak.  Eventually he became mayor, which eased his path to helping Nathan even more, as both town and company worked, below the radar, to bring back their sheriff.

Allison quietly got on with her life.  Gave birth to her beautiful daughter.  Moved away from Eureka and the hopelessness it now embodied for her, taking a position in New Zealand that was tailored for her talents, and dutifully emailed Nathan photos of their daughter.  He loved the baby, but spent no time with her, before Alli left, which only convinced her to move that much sooner.  His distraction, his obsession, had once again taken over his life, and left no room in it for her.  For either of them.

Fargo became Tess’ second in command, but still spent most of his time doing whatever he could to help Dr. Stark.  His lingering guilt over Sheriff Carter’s death sobered him, steadied him, and focused him in a way nothing else could have.

Nathan worked.

~~

Life was a little blurry.  When Fargo reminded him, he slept.  When Fargo brought him food, he ate.  Sometimes, when he checked his email, he smiled over his daughter, but somewhere along the line he’d realized that the driving factor in wanting Allison so much had been to keep Carter from getting her.

He always had been competitive.  He was seldom self-reflective.

He loved his daughter, from a distance, but he wasn’t really cut out to be a father.  Losing Callister had taught him that, and Callister was an adult AI he’d built.  He’d tried with Kevin, but even then had nearly managed to get the boy killed with the Artifact, as science once more trumped humanity.

He winced.  Even in the privacy of his thoughts, that was cold, but then, he’d been called an ice man on more than one occasion.  Abominable, too, and wouldn’t Jack laugh at that pun.

He wasn’t sure when Carter had become Jack.  Sometime in the last four years, as he’d buried himself in probabilities and impossibilities, as he’d cut himself off from everything else, as he leaned on Henry and Fargo and eventually Zane, and ignored Tess, and sometimes remembered to miss Allison, it had all become about Jack.

Perhaps it was guilt, but he’d never been one to let conscience get in the way of scientific exploration.  If he had, he’d have never gotten in bed with the DOD.  Perhaps it was compensation, or anger, or penance, although he didn’t really believe in that, either.  Maybe it was pride, because it should have been him who leapt in the breach to save the world, or maybe it was just an inbred determination to solve the unsolvable.  Whatever it was, as the months passed and the trials failed and everyone else who’d had any hope gave up, Nathan’s determination settled into diamond hardness.

He was going to get Jack Carter back.

If he won another Noble and rewrote a few laws of the universe along the way, well, that was just icing on the cake.

~~

The images weren’t whirring by quite as fast as they used to, Jack decided.  He could actually open his eyes without wanting to hurl.  Plus, he wasn’t hurting as he had been when he’d first gotten stuck.  Seemed like he was healing up okay.  As he watched the world whizz past he noticed some things.

Zoe wasn’t there.

Neither was Lexi, but more to the point, neither was Allison.  Some redheaded chick in tall boots showed up a few times, and lately a new kid had been hanging around, but mainly it was Nathan.  Sometimes Henry, a few more times Fargo, but always Nathan.

Jack wasn’t sure when Stark had become Nathan, but he had a sneaking suspicion it had started before he landed in the stasis chamber, or time bubble, or whatever the hell he was stuck in.  They’d worked pretty well together, and even bonded a little, weirdly enough, tunneling under the town to keep it from blowing up like a volcano.  He hadn’t been quite as resentful as he probably should have been when Allison chose Nathan.  Plus, there was something reassuring about the fact that while everyone else seemed to have pretty much given up on him, Nathan was still there.

Of course, it was probably because Nathan’s brain, and Nathan’s ego, couldn’t stand the chance that there was a problem he couldn’t solve, but by that point, Jack would take anything he could get.

With nothing to do but sit there, stare at Nathan, and think, Jack, not usually being one for self-analysis, found himself doing exactly that.  What was it about Allison that drew him in?  Yeah, sure, she was gorgeous.  A good mom.  Kind of.  Damned brilliant.  Not very good with Zoe.  Tended to forget about Kevin.  Was having (already had?) a baby with Nathan.  Still wanted Jack to walk her down the aisle, and come to think of it, that was kind of gratuitous cruelty, knowing that he thought he was in love with her.

That stopped him cold.

Thought?

Not was?

He stared at Nathan some more.

Yeah.

Wasn’t, really.  Would probably go for the cute redhead, given the option.  Was, apparently, a bit of a slut, himself.  Hell, given his track record, he’d probably have better luck with Fargo.

That thought made him shudder, and he quickly inserted Henry’s face in place of Fargo’s.

No, that didn’t work, either.  Henry was his best friend.  Probably sexy, but more like a brother than a lover, and Jack wasn’t into incest.  Given what his sister was like, that was probably just as well, or God knows what might have happened.  Lexi was strange.

Without conscious thought, Nathan’s face took Henry’s place in Jack’s mind’s eye, overlaying the image in front of his actual eyes, of Nathan in shirtsleeves bent over a keyboard typing so fast his fingers looked like hummingbirds’ wings.  Jack had a feeling even if he wasn’t watching the world in super-fast motion, Nathan’s fingers would still be moving too fast to see.  He just typed like that.

And holy cow.  Nathan’s image was still in Jack’s mind’s eye, only this time, he wasn’t wearing a shirt.  Or anything else.

When had that happened?

And when did naked Stark get so sexy?

Another image flashed, this one of Nathan strapped down on a chair wearing nothing but boxers, surrounded by glass, as scientists did something to his nano-somethings to stop his clones from taking over the town, and Jack shivered.

Okay, so maybe naked Stark had been sexy long before he became Nathan.

He was still chewing on that thought, and wondering how long a hard-on could last when a guy was stuck in a time bubble, when the pressure seals burst and he fell out of the chamber into Nathan Stark’s arms.

~~

December 3, 2012.  Four years, three months, fourteen days, two hours and twenty one minutes since Jack stepped into the chamber and disintegrated.

Nathan stretched his back and winced at the cracks even as he sighed at the release of tension along his spine.

This was it.

This had to be it.

He refused to admit defeat, but he had to admit he was running out of ideas.  Over the past fifteen months he’d noticed a change in the proton flux within the core of the chamber, though; they appeared to be gradually increasing in speed, as if to catch up somehow with the flow of time around them.  The indigo light was deepening, to true black.  That had triggered an idea that led to a new approach, and after several computer trials he, Fargo, and Zane were ready to implement his solution.

It would retrieve Jack.

Or it would kill him.

Do, or die.

Given Nathan’s suspicion that Jack was running out of time anyway, he did what he always did in a deadline situation, and went with his gut (not that he’d ever admit that to anyone but Henry, who already knew it).

He input the last of the commands, and stepped toward the chamber.  Behind him, Zane’s voice calmly called out updates, speed and function and mean and deceleration, as Fargo mumbled something about rising stress factors and watched monitors.

This had to work.

Had to, damnit.

He didn’t realize he’d walked right up to the chamber, nearly pressed against the glass, until he saw movement inside.  A swirl of light, blue, then darker, then black, then lighter, solidifying slowly, so slowly, then faster, and faster… until Jack Carter grinned at him.  Stumbled out of the chamber.  Fell on top of him.

Kissed him.

“Holy shit,” Zane said somewhere in the distance.

“Ditto,” Fargo stuttered out.

Nathan was too busy being kissed by Jack to pay any attention.

It appeared that the time away, locked in a pocket of time outside the standard flow, hadn’t done much but turn Jack on.  Normally, Nathan would have been shocked, or amused, or asked the man if he, Nathan, had somehow metamorphosed into Allison, but the situation hadn’t been normal for a very long time.

Nathan kissed Jack back.

Somewhere even further in the distance, he heard Tess Fontana say, “Oh.  That explains everything.”

He didn’t bother trying to puzzle out what ‘everything’ was.  Jack was on top of him.  Jack was back.

Jack had an erection that was drilling a hole in Nathan’s stomach.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the circumstances, it matched the one Nathan sported, currently drilling a hole in Jack’s thigh.

They’d have to do something about that.

Giving in to the realization that he’d completely lost his sense of propriety, combined with the euphoria that solving a thorny scientific challenge had always brought and the adrenaline from doing what everyone said couldn’t be done, and the physical reality of 170 pounds of aroused Jack Carter spread-eagled atop him trying to suck his tongue out of his mouth, Nathan went with the flow.

~~

It was quite some time before they came back to reality, found all their clothes, stretched out the kinks, and looked up.

Zane had come through for them, no doubt at Fargo’s insistence, and the glass walls of the chamber were fogged an impenetrable deep gray.  The door was locked, and while they could hear voices outside, they were muffled, indicating some noise buffers were operating.

Jack looked at Nathan, naked, wrapped around him, and blushed.

“So,” Nathan said slowly, “welcome back.”

Jack grinned.  Nathan smirked at him.

“Thanks for getting me back,” Jack answered, running one hand down Nathan’s face, drawing him down into another kiss, wiping away that smirk.

When they came up for air, Nathan’s expression was as smug as ever, but for once, Jack thought it was cute, not irritating.

“I will always have your back, Jack,” Nathan informed him solemnly, then snickered.

“Yeah, and the next couple feet below it,” Jack snickered back, shifting his weight.  It wasn’t the first time he’d had a guy for a lover, but it had been awhile, and Nathan was… proportionately built.

In other words, hung like a damned horse.

He hadn’t really intended to have sex with Nathan within seconds of his rescue, but hormones had a mind of their own, and Nathan was all for it, so there it was.  Funny how fast he came up with the lube, though.  Seemed like GD labs came equipped for any eventuality, which gave Jack pause, until his brain latched onto another question.

“Er, what about Allison?” he asked uncomfortably.  He hadn’t noticed any rings on the hands Nathan had put all over him.

Nathan stared at him blankly.

“Conversation for another time, maybe?” Jack persisted.

Nathan nodded.  Then the dark fog on the glass started to clear, and they both dove for their clothes.  They were barely dressed when the door opened, and Fargo burst in, followed closely by the kid Jack hadn’t met and the red head he might have gone for if he hadn’t fallen for Nathan somewhere along the way.

Fargo babbled.  The new guy smirked.  The red head smirked.  Nathan smirked.

Jack rolled his eyes and finished buttoning his shirt.  Scientists.  Couldn’t live without ‘em, couldn’t shoot them all and hide the bodies.  Someone would notice.  Jack gave Nathan’s ass a quick glance.  Besides, he’d miss at least one of them.

Eureka.  Surreal.  His life.

Yeah, with everything that changed, some things remained the same.

FIN


End file.
